Biopic of Sir Elton John, clichéd, weirdly canted, is still largely enjoyable.
After the Oscar-winning Bohemian Rhapsody, millennials continue to plumb the music of their elders in Rocketman, one side of the Sir Elton John story. Desperate both to entertain and to settle scores, the movie veers between celebration and revenge while settling almost always on the least challenging creative path.
With John, formerly Reg Dwight, serving as executive producer, Rocketman is as close to an authorized bio as a movie can get. In this account he was since a child a criminally under-recognized artist beset with daddy and self-esteem issues. This toxic mix resulted in some fantastic pop songs and severe dependencies on drugs, alcohol, and bad relationships.
Director Dexter Fletcher skirted many of the same themes in his previous film, Bohemian Rhapsody (which he took over from Bryan Singer). Rocketman is a considerably looser, more enjoyable film, liable at any moment to spin into hallucinogenic montages and straight-out musical numbers. Screenwriter Lee Hall marshals the facts efficiently enough, and Taron Egerton gives an energetic if unexceptional performance as the pop star. Like his ersatz spy in the Kingsman series, Egerton is playing a part he’s not quite suited for: he doesn’t dance very well and displays little singing ability. He barrels his way through on confidence.
Period details — clothes, cars, decor — are suitably impressive, and then there are the songs, most of them milestones from early in John’s career. As a director, Fletcher doesn’t really cut loose until “Saturday Night’s All Right for Fighting,” a rocker that spills out from a pub into carnival fairgrounds and dingy alleyways. It’s a superlative production number, with intimations of ska and Bollywood neck-and-neck with Jerry Lee Lewis moves. Viewers’ initial disconnect (hey, this isn’t the right instrumentation, the singing’s different, why are there dancers?) dissolves because the piece is so effervescent, so creative, so much fun.
In fact the music’s so good viewers may overlook how miserable John’s life was early on. Not the problems with his parents: the film returns to them so often that they become a sort of narrative crutch, umpteen versions of “John might have been happy except …” No, what’s interesting about John’s early career are the sleazy promoters, crooked managers, bad contracts, shoddy recording studios, lack of money, lack of promotion, lack of belief. Rocketman does a great job capturing this period, John’s harrowing climb to success, the solace of drugs, drinks, sex. (Lots of rock musicians felt the same way; cue Ray Davies and The Kinks singing “Denmark Street.”)
What’s not interesting: what happens after John succeeds. Show-biz excess is inevitably tawdry and depressing: flung ashtrays, spills into pools, hideous clothes, limos, hangers-on. It’s also monotonous. You can go back to Gene Kelly in For Me and My Gal and find the same behavior. Rocketman documents John’s decline, always suggesting that his problems aren’t entirely his fault. But the movie doesn’t have much advice about a happy ending. What are the lessons John is to learn? Grow up? Stop being a jerk? Get different parents? Find true love?
That last one actually worked for John, after he came to grips with assorted psychological problems. (They’re discussed at length in the movie and brought to life by a surprisingly effective Bryce Dallas Howard as the musician’s mother.) But Rocketman ends well before his rehabilitation and lasting marriage.
The film’s music is presented in a sort of vacuum. Rocketman cites a few musicians (Neal Young, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Neil Diamond) but doesn’t show where John got songs, his moves, his persona. He was part of a wave of singer-songwriters at the time, and his earlier albums leaned heavily on the Americana of groups like The Band. But Elton John sold out quicker and harder than just about any of his contemporaries. It was a strategy that led to incredible wealth and fame, but it also nonplussed his early followers. Critics were increasingly incensed by his defiant commercialism, which only egged him on to greater displays of ostentation.
Rocketman wants viewers to believe John’s problems came from his troubled personality, his parents, his sexuality, the pressures of show biz. The movie can’t suggest that after a red-hot period of creativity, John lost his way, compensating by giving in to addictive impulses. That’s not the story Elton John wants to tell, and it’s not what the filmmakers believe viewers want to see either.
Unfortunately, that’s the rock star story, and Rocketman has trouble pulling away from it. God bless Sir Elton John, his sobriety, his happy marriage, but don’t try to persuade me this is how it all happened.
